Iban Zaldua, This Strange and Powerful Language: Eleven Crucial Decisions a Basque Writer Is Obliged to Face, translated by Mariann Vaczi, 2016 (2012):
This is not strange by the way, for any writer has to make decisions constantly. As Vita Sackeville-West put it, even the very moment of starting to write a novel is a crucially important decision for a writer. But I do have the impression that those of us who write in a marginalized, subdued language in a diaglossic, folkloric state; in decline; in full recovery; very ancient (cross out what you think does not apply); those of us who write in a language like Basque, from a small, colonized country, with the greatest level of autonomy in Europe; overdeveloped; schizophrenic (cross out, with even greater momentum if at all possible, what does not apply) as the Basque Country, we are obliged to make a few more decisions than most writers. Even those dilemmas that we share with writers of other languages and countries assume their own idiosyncrasies when we face them in our tiny corner of the Global Republic of Letters.
